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My Turn is Low End Mac's column for reader-submitted
articles. It's your turn to share your thoughts on all things
Mac (or iPhone, iPod, etc.) and write for the Mac web. Email your
submission to Dan Knight
.
Yet another "oh, cool" moment happened today.
I run a hobby
website - nothing fancy, mostly scale models, decal reviews,
tips and techniques. This website is one of the reasons I still have
my HP Pavilion 4453 running Windows.
First, the program I like to use, LiquidFX, is only available for
Window. Not a big deal, as I don't use WYSIWYG editors; I prefer
text. BBEdit on the Mac is growing on me, and on occasion I'll boot
into BeOS on
the PC and use CoolCat.
The camera's the other reason I use Windows. If it were an Apple
product, it might qualify as a Road
Apple, but just barely. I use a Polaroid
PDC 640. It's got decent resolution and is easy to use. It's got
problems dealing with the dark - a beautifully lit up church in the
old neighborhood, maybe two blocks away, never got photographed.
The problem with it is that it uses the PC's serial port.
If I'd bought a camera just six months later, it'd be using USB.
Ah well. Either way, in the Windows world, using this camera requires
loading special software - a TWAIN driver, specifically, and I can't
even use it in NT - it's only available for Windows 95 and 98.
Fortunately, it's recognized natively in BeOS, and Be's Camera app
is perfectly happy with it. Slow, but happy.
Either way, though, it's been hampering my migration to Mac. I can
get a USB card reader (it uses the wafer-thin Smart Media cards) and
a USB card for my Power Mac - when the money comes in - but I
wanted to do this on the cheap. (Note that the card plus reader would
probably total $50-60 - not bad, but still.)
Well, not too long ago (thanks to the
LEM Swap list) I found myself with a pile of Macs - everything
from an SE to some 7100/80s.
In this pile I found a Quadra
840AV with those wonderful RCA and S-video in and out jacks.
Today I found my camera's out-to-TV RCA cable. It works
beautifully with the 840AV.
The setup is this - I hook the camera up to its external power
brick (to save the batteries, rechargeable or not). I then have two
options, the camera-to-serial connection to work with the PC, or a
camera-to-RCA-jack connection, normally to work with a TV or VCR.
Using the second jack, I hook it up to the Quadra 840AV and fire
up the Apple Video Player. All I need to do then is run it like a
slideshow, using the camera. I can save the "slideshow" as a movie or
freeze and capture individual frames (pictures) with the video
controls.
The only thing I need to find out now is if there are any other
(preferably shareware or freeware) programs that can take this input
directly, and allow me to save it in JPEG or GIF format. I want to be
able to do this in as few steps as possible. If anyone has any
suggestions, please email
me.
No, it's not "drag-and-drop" easy, but it's a way of using the
camera (and protecting my investment in it) that Polaroid never
thought of.
I love this Quadra!
UPDATE: Several readers have suggested GraphicConverter
for cropping and editing screen shots (among other things) and
Cameraid as a program
that will work with the Agfa camera.
Share your perspective on the Mac by emailing with "My Turn" as your subject.
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